One of my early posts is being highlighted by the lovely Kristin, as part of the AMB blog carnival.
You can read the post here, or you can read all the other talented entries here.
Author: Veronica Foale
-
Notice me! Notice me!
Something happens and I stand up, walk away from my computer and stab myself in the eye. Falling forwards, I lay in a pool of blood and wonder if this is less painful that what I’ve just witnessed.
Wait.
Rewind.
Something happens and I stand up and walk away from my computer.
That’s where this story ends.
***
Notice me! Notice me!
We all shout it.
This is the InterWebs and we’re all crying to be noticed, while hiding in our corners, under a blanket. We’re a giant flock of male robins, trying to impress a future mate. We dance and we sing and we flap and somewhere, another bird watches and wonders what the fuck?
Screeching to be noticed, hoping that we’ll find an audience.
It’s sort of interesting.
***
If you scorn a label, only to be noticed and slapped with that label, do you tear it off and walk away?
Or do you preen, happy to have been noticed in the first place.
Which is more important, being noticed? Or your truth.
***
This is my truth:
I steal time away from life in order to write.
Or is it –
I steal time away from writing, in order to live.
I’m not so sure anymore. Everything is tied up in my imagination, in my could’s and possibly’s and maybe’s that I forget that I’m still sitting in front of my computer watching a cursor blink on an empty page.
Blink.
Blink.
Blink.
My toddler laughs and while I watch, a bird flies – THWAP – into the window.
That is my truth.
***
How long until we hit the glass in here and come up short; left stunned and lying flat on our back.
What on earth hit me?
What on earth did I hit?
***
Blink.
Blink.
Blink.
-
I Like…
I like to stop and watch humanity swirl past me, a rock in a river of flooding water. Catching glimpses of reality; the way light falls on her hair, a chubby ankle as a baby learns to walk, a smile for the stranger.
I like to watch and listen, silent against a wall, a small smile as I pick up bits of someone else’s life. A he said she said conversation, a teenager with angst, a mother at the end of her rope.
I like to live inside my head, holding imaginary conversations, wondering if this time, this sentence, will it be the branch that breaks the dam and leaves me head down, drowning in a sea of words – a beautiful thing.
I like to lay on my back in the grass in the warm sunshine, feeling the earth support me as I breathe in time with the world.
I like my imagination.
-
Falling apart
I fell apart, broken and sobbing while the clock ticked down, stopped and then nothing.
I looked around.
Is that it? Is this all?
And it was. The year of firsts finished, not with a bang or a crash, but with a fizzle. A slight smell of burning fills the air.
++
This time last year I was … I stop.
Fill in the gaps.
I was shocked, exhausted and broken. I was stressed and fucked up.
I was changed.
++
Some women buy shoes, some buy clothes, some buy chocolate and others buy nothing.
I buy books. I buy other worlds to lose myself in, fantasies and other people’s pain. I buy lives and seep into them as I leave myself behind.
It’s a coping mechanism, but there are worse ones to have.
++
They adjust my painkillers and prescribe me something to help me sleep. I spend three days stoned before deciding to halve my dosage tomorrow and see how I feel. I can put up with a little pain in order to have this fog lift, to make my hands remember how to type. I’m swimming through treacle and somewhere out there, the colours are brighter and the world is sharp. But not here. Here there is fog and headspins and drugs.
Tomorrow will be better. Being stoned is a nice way to leave the pain behind and swim through unthinking, but it’s not conducive to thinking or writing or parenting. I want my clear head back – I want myself back.
I tell myself that there is always a learning curve involved in new meds and new doses, but I still feel ashamed of how I feel.
I didn’t mean to do this to myself.
That’s what they all say.
Keep repeating it. Tomorrow will be better.
++
My bookshelves fill up and I wonder how many more books I can buy before we’ve got no room for them.
Lots I hope.
-
Am Ow-Side!
I didn’t want to go outside when my son stood wailing at the baby gate, crying for ‘ow-side!’ I wanted to stay inside and hibernate, curling up with my book and a hot drink. I didn’t want to have to do anything, just be alone inside my head.
Instead, I took him outside to join his sister in running around the paddocks.
And the look on his face was worth it as I opened the front door and he, newly clad in bright blue gumboots, clomped out to join his father.
It was worth it when we grabbed some wheat and fed the chooks and ducks, together.
It was worth it, to hear him calling duck-duck-duck-duck as he tried to chase them a little.
It was worth it.
He spent the first 10 minutes we were outside happily exclaiming ‘am ow-side! am ow-side!’
He chased a duck and paddled in the water. He stomped through a mud puddle and ran around the tyre arena. He helped to check for eggs and chased his sister.
And finally, he asked to be picked up and we came inside, to eat lunch and nap.
It was worth braving the cold and bitter wind. It was worth not getting to write what I was going to write. It was worth not curling up with a book.
It was worth all that, just to see his face light up as he called ‘Am ow-side!’ to me every few steps through the grass.
Seems I’m not the only one who hates the indoor isolation of winter.
And we’ll be going ow-side more often.